Somebody Else's Kids Report for Lori: Her Story and Best Ways to Accomodate her Needs

           The character that I am focusing this paper on is a seven-year-old girl by the name Lori. She is seven years old and have teachers who say that her kindness and compassion she has for others is impeccable given her background. She has this authentic love and care that she shows to everyone and treats her classmates both with and without disabilities Lori comes from a rough living environment where she was heavily abused (physically) as a child. One incident had left Lori with neurological damage to her brain and skull. Resulting from this beating, Lori suffered under the conditions of a fractured skull where her a fragment of her skull had pushed into her brain leading to catastrophic damage to her cognitive development. Some of her injuries include suffering with epilepsy, difficulty in concentrating on one task for a given time and has issues in class as she differentiates between letters of the alphabet. Based on the ideal that the cells in her brain do not replace themselves as cells specified for other parts of her body, the damage of the puncture from the bone fragment making contact with her brain. This damage has made her more susceptible to having a hindered ability to remain seated and focused for a long duration of time.

           Having a student in the class who suffers under these conditions can serve as being fairly challenging. This is mainly due to the ideal that knowing Lori’s background, her ability to sit still and focus all her attention on one task at a time. Over the past few weeks, I have been building a unit plan in which Lori is aged up to the age of a high school freshman or sophomore that is learning about biology in the discipline of life science. My overall plan for guiding class instruction is to open up class with a think-pair-share style drill activity where students have a few minutes to think independently prior to pair up with a neighbor near by and discuss the similarities and differences that exist between their responses. Finally, as a class we would discuss the subject matter that is addressed in the drill activity. Due to Lori having a hard time with sitting still, I have two accommodations to aide her in class during drill activities. One of which is to allow for Lori to walk to a classmate in another area of the classroom to appeal to her sense to constantly be moving. Another accommodation I think could work for Lori I stumbled across on Facebook a few days ago. In the post was a picture of a purple folder and on that folder was a post it note. The note said please take this folder to (Insert teacher name). Beneath that line was a sentence that said ‘Is this what you are asking my teacher for? This serves as an avenue in which students who have a hard time sitting still to get the break, they need to get out of the classroom to stretch and move their limbs prior to continuing with learning in the classroom. The only drawback I see in this technique is coordinating with other teachers to see who would be willing to participate in this. In addition, the original idea of this is to allow for each teacher to pass it along to one another until each teacher has received the purple folder. However, I feel as though there should be multiple purple folders available in each classrooms so that if there is a child that habitually needs that break, they can obtain the services they need to remain calm, cool, and collected for their time in the classroom.

            When it comes to in class activities, my go to is the use of Cornell Notes to supply students with the background information they need to be successful in the completion of classroom and extension activities to further student comprehension in the sciences. Due to the ideal that students may become anxious in writing notes supplied in a PowerPoint due to the fear of not recording something that can aide them in their studies. For some students, they can spend their time trying to record every word that is written on a slide when the main take home messages are only one line out of the entire slide. Knowing that it was not that long ago since I was in the shoes of a high schooler, I know when I am doing notes for my students, I plan on doing a fill in the blank styled guided notes where the only words students will be filling in are the focus or vocabulary words that they will be assessed on at a later time. This allows for students to build a more working vocabulary without getting worked up when it comes to note taking. In addition, my plan is to highlight and make the focus words in a different color so that it stands out from the rest of the text. My hope with this is to allow for Lori to be able to mentally think “okay this font is red and underlined it must be important, and I must focus my attention on this particular term.” I also would want to have Lori sitting in the front of the classroom. This would allow for Lori to be sitting where the slideshow is right in front of her which would aide her in her concentration. As a teacher, I know that it is inevitable that students will want to talk to each other. That is why my in-class activities incorporate a lot of group work because I understand the magnitude of benefits students receive when they collaborate in the sciences. Having a student like Lori in the class, I feel as though she truly would benefit from interacting with the peers as she would hopefully gain a different perspective and learns from her peers. One of the most common activities to present real world application is to complete lab activities. In the traditional sense, I know that labs can be very time consuming. This can serve as being very challenging for a student that has a hard time with sitting still and focusing on one activity for a long period of time. With this in mind, I plan on trying to create stations for the lab so that each phase of the lab will be at one lab bench and students will rotate when they are ready to proceed to the next step. I think this would serve as being beneficial for both students with disabilities and students without because it will allow for each student to zone in on one part of the lab and make sure they follow the steps to a t prior to moving on to the next part of the lab. My hope with this is in having lab partners or lab groups will allow for students to help each other out and assure that everyone is on the right track prior to moving on in the lab activity.

            While some activities may be labs, there are also times where students will be completing other activities to expand their knowledge on the content that is being taught in class. For me, I am a huge fan of using technology as a means of presenting the content in a modern way that is more relatable to millennials. In addition, I plan on doing an interest survey to determine what things interest my students the most. I feel that this will be beneficial to Lori because she will be able to learn the content standards while being engaged in the topics that interest them the most.  My biggest hope with this is to allow for me to have Lori’s complete attention in completing in class activities. In addition, I hope that with her completing activities that relate to her interest, it will allow for her to have more of an open mind with learning new content as it relates to biology. As class time comes to a close, I like the idea of exit tickets being used to gauge where student comprehension is and what questions may still be lingering around in my student’s minds. Given that Lori also has difficulty in focusing and issues with reading and writing, I would require that she only answer one of the questions presented in the prompt. This will allow for her to make sure her thoughts are more concise and are reflective of what she has learned thus far.                             
          

           I am a firm believer in the idea that children regardless of age can pick up on your emotions and attitudes. With that being said, if I go into class having a negative attitude, I would be foolish to think that my students would come to class with and open mind and be receptive to learning in the classroom. However, if I come into class with a positive attitude where I remind students that I am not expecting them to be experts, I am just expecting that they come to class and are willing to learn, the world is my oyster when it comes to education. I know being a teacher will not always be easy, but being with the kids I love will make every ounce of hard work worth it.